Lee O'Toole, the brother of one of the "Milk Carton Kids" who vanished in 1996, has died aged 39 without ever discovering what happened to his sibling. David Spencer, 13, and his friend Patrick Warren, 11, disappeared on Boxing Day 1996 in Birmingham and never returned home, becoming one of the country's most enduring missing persons cases after police circulated appeals on milk cartons. Lee's death marks a tragic milestone in a case that has haunted a family for three decades, with the bodies of both boys never recovered despite numerous searches and appeals.

The pair were last sighted at a petrol station at 12:45 am on 27 December 1996, and detectives initially dismissed them as runaways. In 2021, following a Channel 4 documentary implicating child-killer Brian Field, Lee led a volunteer dig near Solihull Moors FC based on a tip-off, but no trace of the boys was found. The family posted a tribute on the Milk Carton Kids' social media, expressing that Lee "will now have the answers he has always wanted" and would be reunited with his brother, and that they are grateful for the community's support throughout his thirty-year search.